


Paradise and Me

by 3amepiphany



Series: The Boutique AU [4]
Category: Wander Over Yonder
Genre: Multi, The Boutique AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 09:08:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6605038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amepiphany/pseuds/3amepiphany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They get that coffee, finally. Also some trashbags being trashbags - now in day-glo bro colors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradise and Me

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to ashtheechidna (Jelly) and eleanorappreciates (Elly) over on the Tumblr for letting me sneak their OCs in here with mine (Styx); also HUGE shout out to avocadosatapogee for the freakin' adorable fanart aaaaAAAAAH (dat's me yellin' - you can peep it here at http://avocadosatapogee.tumblr.com/post/142647103702/omegalovaniac).
> 
> Sorry for the delay, and sorry this is so long. Also I'm sorry if I've missed any errors, I sort of speed-proofed it so I could get it up and out. If you catch anything please pay it no mind. :)

His alarm went off, beckoning him out of a deep sleep and into the deeper promises of a regular old Wednesday night.

Cleaning night.

It had been a weird week and there was a very good chance that a lot of things on the cleaning log had been neglected or done haphazardly. With all of the unpacking, there would be more dust, and with all of the inventory work and the new items they had been trying to find room for to put out there were a lot of emptied fixtures and bare surfaces to clean and do maintenance on, so he was looking forward to getting to the shop to get started and back in the routine.

He checked his phone to see a few text messages from Awesome, and one from Ryder telling him that Awesome had tried to call the shop to speak to him. He scrolled to the first few messages. Very standard “Call me,” and “Where are you?” sorts of messages, and then there was one with an image attached.

It was a Fweet that Dom had sent out from her Instapic account - that giant dildo she’d bought at the store, just sort of laying across her coffee table with a bunch of notebooks and notepads, and her socked feet in the shot. Next to a mug and a bottle of water, not-too well-hid under a sheet of paper, was the live CD from the last tour Hater and the Harbingers had done. The next message that Awesome had sent was a screenshot of the caption she had added to the photo: “Big news… coming.”

The rest of the messages were sort of a jumble of Awesome being half-excited and half-afraid, still trying to get a hold of him. He lay there in bed for a little bit longer, trying to stave off the impulse to answer anything just yet without some coffee in his system.

He thought about how best to organize the box of pegboard hooks until his second alarm went off.

Hater was up, and trying to make himself a dinner-sort of meal in the kitchen. Captain Tim circled around his legs frantically, waiting for scraps and making quite a scene of it. As Peepers closed his bedroom door behind him, she came tearing down the hallway at him, whining, her little legs kicking everywhere and pulling at his pajama pants. He tried to pick her up, but she wiggled and slipped right out of his grip and shot right back through the hallway and around the corner. He could hear Hater cursing at her.

There was coffee waiting for him on the counter, thankfully, and even if it was just a little old, he thanked Hater for it and sat down at the table.

Stirring away at the pot of instant noodles on the stovetop, the one thing he could make with his eyes closed, or without burning down the building, Hater said, “Your boyfriend texted me.”

If he had a nose, coffee would have spurted out of it. Instead, Peepers inhaled it in his surprise, sputtering and coughing, and Captain Tim skittered away and hid somewhere in the living room, startled by the noise and the spray of lukewarm coffee all over her. He grabbed at a couple of the fast food napkins they had piled on the table and he wiped at his shirt and lap, and then threw a few more of them down on the floor before he’d have the chance to get his socks wet, too, tossing the giant bundle of them once it was all mopped up. Hater apologized, and somewhat corrected himself, still not quite right.

“Awesome. Awesome texted me. Sorry, I probably should have just said that instead of just saying boyfriend.”

“We’re not dating,” which should have been the slogan of their relationship - on t-shirts, mugs, tattooed on his eyelid or on Awesome’s bicep - made its way past his lips as soon as he was able to speak properly. It was like a mantra. He was calm again. Good Grop. He watched Hater very carefully and very daintily crack an egg into the pot of simmering soup and call for Captain Tim. A series of smoochy noises brought her out from behind the couch, and she scrambled over once she saw the eggshell being offered to her. She ate it loudly. “What did he say?”

“Just that he needed you to call him. I told him you were sleeping, and to flarp off, you’d call him later. Are you sure you’re not getting back together? What happened to that weird sunshine sweater dork from last weekend?”

“Are you policing my romantic life?” he asked, topping off his mug with what coffee was left in the carafe and looking around for the filters to get another pot started.

Matter-of-factly, the reply was, “You know how much I hate it when you two are together.”

Hater’s relationship with Awesome was just as strained as Peepers’ was. The dynamic that Hater carried didn’t mesh well with the mogul, and vice-versa; there was way too much neon and awkward-print jeggings, drum and bass and shots of Jager to the guy for Hater to keep up with. And Awesome was forever talking scrud about how degenerately gross the scene that the Harbingers topped was. Over the years there had been a few scuffles over ladies, a few scuffles over contracts and productions, and a few scuffles just for the sake of beating the snot out of one another. It was the high-school rivalry that had never really ended, and that they could never actually pry themselves away from anyhow. Peepers, either. He had always been their middle ground and their levy of logic and reason. Awesome knew Hater was a good act to produce. Hater knew Awesome was a good producer to be tied to in the industry. And poor Peepers did his best to keep the negotiations at a max and the brawling to a minimum, for the best interests of everyone.

Did that mean putting himself right into the jaws of the shark in the worst of times? Absolutely. Well. Peepers was not some sort of embarrassingly appointed courtier and he would be the first to verbally beat someone into the ground for saying such a thing... though there was the one time that Hater almost put Awesome in the hospital with a physical beatdown for it, much to Peepers’ dismay.

It was complicated. Everyone knew it.

His phone alerted him to another text message.

“Don’t lie to me, Peepers,” grumbled Hater as he turned the stove off and started to eat his soup right out of the pot, blowing on a forkful of noodles as he went to go sit down on the couch. Peepers said nothing, and listened to the shuffling of papers and the slurping of soup as he found the filters and started the coffeemaker up.

He showered, drank a little more coffee, and made himself a sandwich to eat; he grabbed a scarf and his gloves, shrugged into his jacket, and reminded Hater to clean up Captain Tim’s old cobwebs in the back room before heading out the door with his helmet under his arm.

Once in the hallway he dialed up Awesome. “Gracious,” he said, trying not to yell. It was late and normal people were settling into bed for the night. “Good fucking grop.”

“What is she doing? What are you doing? What’s Hater doing?”

He could hear the din of a nightclub in the background, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. The guy very nearly lived at bars and such. That, too, was often a barrier between them. His limo was basically its own subwoofer. It caused Peepers some of the worst tension headaches he’d ever had in his whole life, and he’d had quite a few by Hater’s antics alone.

As he made his way down into the parking garage, he explained the conversation that he and Dom had; surprisingly, Awesome not only was quiet during this, but there wasn’t an immediate response at the end of it. Or at least, aside from the muttered, “They are going to kill me,” there wasn’t. “Listen, I need to get to the shop. Can you call me in a couple of hours? I need to start my shift and you probably need a little time to process that.”

“Peeps, wait,” said the producer, quickly. “Who’s on damage control?”

“I’m going to have my hands full with Hater’s studio time, really, really soon. So. You.”

“Bruh.”

“Call me, soon-ah, chunk tuna,” Peepers said before hanging up on him, and pocketing his phone.

Ryder was back from his own break and waiting for him eagerly. Probably way too eagerly. “Hey, two-eyes,” he said, waving from his seat at the counter, where he was flipping through a car magazine. His visor flashed brighter and more painfully into Peepers’ eye than the register’s barcode scanner. He definitely was feeling better. “I hear I missed you gettin’ your due respects while I was gone. Good lay?”

“No lay. How’s your mono, or whatever you had? Cleared up?”

“Ah, uh, it wasn’t mono, it was a viral thing.”

“Mono _is_ a viral thing.”

“It wasn’t mono. I haven’t been to that star system since college.” He tugged at his popped collar a bit, miffed, and then shrugged. “So no lay.”

“Why is everyone so up in my business about this?” He took his helmet into the back room, took off his jacket and scarf, dug around in the desk drawer for the notepad he’d been using to help them figure out the stock layout, and then came back out to survey the work that had happened while he was off. There was still quite a lot to do, even if the box mountain in the back was substantially gone. He flipped to a new page and started writing down his cleaning to-do list as Ryder tried to continue the conversation.

“We’re in your business because you’ve been out of the game too long and we’re all invested in you as friends.”

“You’re not my friend.”

“As friends and coworkers.”

He noted that the pegboard hooks were staggered in a very unflattering manner so he consulted the drawings he and Jeff had made for the edible novelties display. “What has Sylvia told you?” 

Ryder howled in surprise. “Oh, my Grop, it’s Syl??”

“It’s not Sylvia.”

“Holy dag, you tried to bag Sylvia and she shot you down, oh man. Oh, man, I applaud you for trying. The one time I actually gave it a shot she humiliated me in front of our entire graduating class. I went back for our reunion and literally no one remembered anything else about me except that.”

“It’s not Sylvia, for flarp’s sake,” Peepers turned and said, a bit louder than he had the first time.

Ryder’s visor blinked green for just a second, and then it flashed back to red. Peepers waited. The shoe dropped. “....No? How is it not? Dude, I have seen the way she looks at you. It’s the same way she looks at food. It’s the same way she looks at her fruity drinks with the little umbrellas when she goes out. It’s the same way she looks at that idiot backroad friend of hers when he says something stupid.”

Peepers felt his shoulders hunch involuntarily as a weird wave of confusion and annoyance crawled its way up his spine the way Captain Tim would whenever he would open the fridge.

“Yikes, did I say something wrong?”

“...No,” Peepers said, and went back to his list.

“You’re going a little red in the face, my guy, whatever I said, I’m sorry.” Ryder scrambled off of the stool and grabbed at the stack of magazines he’d no doubt been reading through during his shift, putting them away. They worked quietly for a bit before the realization hit. “...It’s him, isn’t it? Syl’s weirdo hippie buddy.”

Peepers turned to him again, quicker, angrier.

“Oh. Oh, grop, please don’t kill me.”

“I know you don’t like the guy. I don’t know if he’s got it in him to say a single bad word about you. But I’m seeing him Saturday, and I’ll be sure to post a giant write-up on it on Spacebook for everyone to read.”

“You don’t have a Spacebook.”

“Grop-fucking-flarp it, Ryder.”

Ryder shrugged, his palms up. “Is it a secret? I can keep a secret.”

Peepers shook his head and assured him that it wasn’t. It wasn’t - it was just that he wasn’t really into talking about it with others yet, really, which was why he was getting frustrated that no one would stop wanting to talk about it with him. 

Except Sylvia, of course, but she was the catalyst and conduit here so he kind of needed to talk with her about it. He had been considering making a list of things they ought to talk about once she came in for her shift, but already knew it would be moot; she likely wouldn’t discuss these matters much but direct him to talk directly with Wander instead - partly because she knew Peepers liked to be as full of research as he could be on something before his approach, and liked to deny him the satisfaction of it as often as she could, and partly because she was right that he needed to engage Wander as his own person instead of just an extension of herself.

“It’s not that I don’t like him. It’s just that he’s weird. Crazy analytical, and he’ll tear you apart with that little smile on his face the whole time.”

Rounding the new display of toy kits, he said, “What? Does he intimidate you or something? He’s a psychotherapist. It’s sort of his job to be analytical and read people.”

“Why work with kids, then? Are they the only ones who aren’t unsettled by him?”

“Maybe kids are just a bit more open to being honest with other people, and with themselves, and he fosters that? I don’t know, man, I don’t work in that field. I’m still getting to know him, forget about figuring out the specifics of being a therapist yet.”

“Doesn’t he give you a weird feeling, though? Like he’s a rube. Plays dumb so you’ll lay it all out on the table for him whether you realize it or not and before you know it you’re gutted and filleted and iced like a big fat ghoti.”

At this, Peepers shrugged, and made his way back down the far end of the shop rather quickly, not making cleaning notes but ones to help with the spatial configurations of rearranging the remaining stock. He wondered what it was Wander had said to Ryder about himself to make him so wary and critical. Jealousy, where Sylvia was involved, maybe? Something to ask her about, surely. But he was moving further away from frustrated and closer into plain angry, listening to Ryder talk about this guy so carelessly. It felt sort of like a personal attack on Peepers’ choices, too, and that was… well, dag. That was bantha schnit. A big old pile of it. And he was already tired of it.

Ryder cleared his throat, his visor blinking. “...So when you say your first date was a no lay-”

Peepers snapped his pen in half, the broken part rattling on the ground loudly. “I swear to Grop, I’m gonna beat you to death with this stainless steel vibe and then I’m gonna clean up the store and dump your body in the sewer, and tell Jeff you quit and no one will be the wiser for it. I’m done talking about my damn personal life, and I know Syl’s not gonna be excited to hear you spouting scrud about Wander. And before we get into it I don’t want to talk about Brad’s creepy obsession with his high school fling, okay?” His coworker went back to putting magazines away, instantly, and he looked down at the floor and his hand. There was ink globbed everywhere. He left a smudge of it on his to-do list so he could mark off cleaning up that mess, and very carefully made his way to the back room to dispose of the broken pen and to wash his hand.

Ryder said nothing for the rest of his shift, continuing to man the register and allowing Peepers to clean and efficiently help the few customers that came in with questions. The to-do list was finished a bit faster than Peepers had anticipated due to the extra annoyance-fueled fervor he was working into his tasks, so once he was done blowing that unsatisfactory load way too soon, he dug around on the pulp bookshelf for something he hadn’t read yet, pulled his old spare reading glasses out of the desk drawer in the back room, and took up Ryder’s seat on the stool at the counter to read as his coworker got up to do his own end-of-shift duties.

Ryder was getting his things together to leave for the night just as the shop door opened and the bell rang.

It was Awesome.

“Hey, Han Yolo,” the mogul said, holding his hand up for a high-five, but then lowering it when Ryder shook his head and waved him off instead. “Ooh, someone fucked up. Peepers, did he fuck up?”

“We’re not discussing that,” said Peepers, watching the day-glo club kingpin as he sauntered through the store in his grop-awful nylon windbreaker. Ryder buttoned up his jacket and left quietly, the bell sending him off. At ease a bit now without the pressure to keep a threat over Ryder’s head, he said to the new contender for his wrath, “I asked you to call me.”

Awesome gave him a smile. Toothy, brilliantly white, and dangerously sharp. "I haven’t been down here in a while and so I decided it would just be easier to drop by and talk about this," he said, leaning onto and over the counter and nearly knocking over a small display of round cardboard tubes full of condoms. Peepers just shrugged, incredibly tired of this growing trend of people just barging into the store to have a word with him. He hoped this wouldn't carry over into the studio, or that it wouldn't continue once they were out on tour for Jeff's sake. He set down the sci-fi book with the questionable cover that he'd chosen, slipping a used receipt into it to mark his place, and fixed the producer with a hard glare. Awesome looked down at it. "’The Green Girl.’ Huh. I don't understand how Jeff managed to hire so many nerds to work here. Do you guys still do the product reviews or are you just reading this for leisure now?"

"Leisure. The review thing we used to do for the store website was kind of lame and literature doesn't really sell here too exceptionally well unless it's full of... interesting articles," he replied, gesturing at the magazine racks. Then he pointed at the bookshelf they had. "But we still carry some pretty neat books anyhow. Some old pulp reprints, some art books. Lots of good ones on how to please your partner, in and outside the bedroom."

"Are you insinuating something?"

“Well. That's a bit defensive."

"Was that too quick?" Awesome stopped himself with small wave, the fabric of his jacket loud and swooshy, and tried again. "Was that response too quick?"

"It was a bit quick. The response. The response was quick. I didn’t mean it in that way, we literally carry a lot of books on the subject."

"Okay. Hey. Speaking about green girls. Okay, so, what the vrell?"

Peepers waited, trying to figure out if he needed to get down from the stool and come out from behind the counter to have this conversation. He decided to stay where he was, taking his reading glasses off, setting them aside, and lacing his fingers together and resting them down on the countertop. He didn’t want to lean too far forward.

Awesome inched towards him anyways, trying to close that distance. He spoke in a low but urgent tone. "I spent the last few hours trying to figure out what I did this time to deserve you throwing that hot mess into my lap. I mean, honestly, I need you to understand that she's not from the same scene as you guys, as the Harbingers. This is gonna blow up in our faces."

"Do you really feel that way?"

"Bro, she skipped on her contract somehow. Was it lawyers? Is she just taking the wash? What happened to her crew and her reps? The label hasn't said a thing, they don't have a press release. Did she kill them all? I'm freaking out. I can't process any of this. And you’re telling me you want to tour them? Together? After everything that went down between them when none of this was a possibility? I just. I can’t."

"Where is all of this coming from?" Peepers asked, and then he stopped himself. "You... Wait. You haven't already tried to date her, too, have you?"

Awesome didn't say anything.

"Oh, come _on_."

"You say 'too' in a mean way."

"Grop. I'm not. You. I meant, ‘her, too’ as in. Her..." he floundered. After a second he simply stopped himself, and put his hands on the counter gently. "I'm not judging. I'm concerned."

"To be concerned you have to have made a judgement call on the situation. And to answer your rude and intrusive question, bro, no, I have not. Yet."

"Don't - ...Awesome, I just. I'm constantly amazed by you. That's all I'm gonna say about that.”

“Please don’t tell Hater.”

Peepers waved at him angrily, and pushed himself back off of the counter with a disgusted sound. “I’m not going to say shiz to him. He’ll destroy you. And then he’ll destroy me. And she’ll obliterate him before he can even get a chance to figure out what to say to her about it all. And then there won’t be any tour.” He looked Awesome in the eyes and shook his head. Frankly, the guy was a hot mess himself - ten times worse by nature than Dom could be on purpose. “She think’s it’s gonna work, I sold her on some small things. If we want it to happen we can make it happen, and it’ll be okay.”

“That piece she had in her photo was _not_ a small thing, bro. It’s... she did get that here, right? Would that even fit in a harness?” Awesome looked around as he made a gesture to his arm, obviously trying to find something close to that girth for reference. “I feel like she’d be okay with me just straight up saying I wouldn’t mind--”

“Ew, okay, no, I do not want to talk about this. Gross.” He shuddered, sort of wanting to grab the book and smack his mouthy ex with it to end the conversation. “I’m just going to advise against you even trying. Please. You know how Hater feels about her, we all do.”

“I’m not looking for something long-term. She never seems to be, either. Why shouldn’t I give it a shot while your boy’s getting the butterflies in his ribcage under control?” Awesome found the same toy Dom had been swinging around, and looked at it pensively. Forever with the failed dating, but never with actually calling it hooking up. Why? Peepers wondered, trying to push away the more explicit thoughts of that reveal. “What about you and Fuzzy Small and Ready to Brawl? Did you get him home okay? Play a little Dr. FeelGood with him, maybe? Eh?” The producer gave him a smirk full of teeth.

There was a pause - and it was a lengthy one. Peepers sighed heavily before answering it. He really should have just smacked him with the book. “Well, you know, the fight, the drinking, the jokes flying around the green room by the end of the night. We were ramped. Went back to my place. The sex was probably the best I’ve ever had.”

Awesome’s smile dropped. “...Really?”

“In all honesty, I’m lying.” Peepers jumped as Awesome punched at the air and made a self-congratulatory noise. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I made a bet with Dom after you guys left.”

“ _What._ ”

“Would you bag the little guy or not. Wow, bro, wow. I’m gonna give her such a hard time about this. Makes me wonder what she thinks about you.”

He glared at Awesome. “You have the advantage over her on that one, that wasn’t fair.”

“Oh, no, she knew. She still took it. Why would you say the ‘best you ever had’, though, dude, that’s harsh.” The producer stepped over to the display where the dildo was and picked it up carefully, showing his surprise at the heft of it. “Are you gonna take her on?”

“Excuse me?”

“Be her manager. Because I need someone militant to make this tour happen if I’m going to be the one worrying about damage control for ‘The Green Girl’, as far as business goes,” he said, making air quotation marks and then wiggling his eyebrows, setting down the toy and running his finger along its length, slowly.

“Do you remember when Hater coined it and everyone used to call me The Commander? And then that sort of stopped for a while?” Awesome shoved his hands into the pockets of his garish jacket and nodded. “She called me that.”

“Well, you know, a lot of people off-label still call you that. It carries weight. Want to bring it back? I can tell Lavicia and the other girls down at the club to bring it back,” he said, referring to his current entourage, several of whom Peepers knew would be absolutely entertained by the thought of calling him that again after so long. Awesome didn’t really need him to give an answer, and so he just laughed, and made his way to the door. “Commander,” he growled on his way out with that shitty, stupid, toothy grin and a half-assed salute.

Peepers sighed, frustrated.

He was just getting to the juicy bits in the novel when the bell announced Sylvia’s arrival, and he was very glad to see her. She had coffee.

Two piping hot black dark roasts for him, and for her, a latte now and a cold dirty chai later - she pulled this out of the cup holder as she set it on the counter, and took the wrinkly dollars that Peepers had pulled out of a pocket for her as she walked past him. He heard the fridge open, close, and a box fall and Sylvia curse gruffly. She came out from the back room, her own scarf hung up but her hoodie and fingerless gloves still on, and she was buckling a leather halter onto herself. She reached for her coffee once she was done, took a big gulp of it, and turned to him, the reins swinging about as she moved. Peepers gave her a look over the rim of his reading glasses before pointedly taking them off and setting it aside. She smiled widely and said, “I can’t give reviews on the new merchandise without knowing anything about it, can I? I’m also not really ready to bring something like this home. So I might as well wear it here, right?”

He looked over at the wall. “I see. That’s all the cruelty-free stuff?” he asked, and then laughed because of the irony of it when she nodded. “I didn’t even notice and I was looking right at them for about twenty minutes. It looks just like the other stock.”

After a moment’s deliberation, though, he walked over and picked out a collar with big silver studs that rivaled the ones on his jacket. The buckle was solid and so was the D-ring. It was lined, and so softly, too. Peepers considered a leash to go with it, but decided against it for the time being. When the hell was he ever going to get to use something like that anyways, privately? The collar at least would be something he could wear to a show and no one would bat an eye at it, so it would get some mileage for sure.

Sylvia looked him up and down and said, “That’s a good choice. Put your bike helmet on, really quick, I wanna see what that looks like.”

He did. And it looked good. “We should make a sign.”

“Arts and crafts time!” Sylvia exclaimed, grabbing their box of markers out from under the counter top and looking for the neon cardstock. “Has Wander texted you about Saturday yet?” she asked once they had a couple of signs underway.

He stopped, marker pulling away from his big blocky lettering. “Nnnnno? Should he have?”

“I’ll remind him. Sometimes he needs reminders.”

“How come you and Wander aren’t together?” He heard himself ask it before he realized that he had, and instantly regretted it. “You don’t have to answer that. At all. Please.”

There was a quiet moment before Sylvia burst into laughter. “Sometimes you fall in love with your best friend, but the thing is that you only ever want to be best friends, and nothing more.”

“What a conundrum.”

“Is it, though?”

“Say it is, what do you do?”

The zbornak capped her marker and reached for the scissors on the back counter. “I don’t know, Peepers, what _do_ you do?” He took a sip of coffee and went back to his sign, carefully outlining its zig-zag border so he could cut it out in a bit, but he could feel her eyes on him. He really ought to stop digging these holes for himself so damned deep. “You’re looking for that point of reference, aren’t you?”

“I don’t really have one.” 

“Hater…?”

“That’s. No. Okay. We’re even. I’m sorry I had asked.”

“Alright, alright. I don’t really have an answer for you. It’s never been a problem. We are exceptionally happy being friends, all things considered. I’d kill for him. He might yell at someone on my behalf. But that’s it. Neither one of us can see us as anything more, but yet he is still my most serious personal relationship to date.” She laughed again, easy and kind. “Oh, boy, you’ve got that deep-thought look on your face. Did that one go too far?”

“A bit. I’m… It’s not that. I don’t know. I’m really nervous. And before you say I don’t look nervous, I’m really just screaming internally, sort of.”

“You look like you have it under absolute control.”

He put down the marker and sat there with his head in his hands for a bit. “I’m worried he’s doing this to entertain the both of us. I got him drunk and got his ass kicked at the show and hours later over pancakes he’s telling me that he’s just had the best night of his life, and then I turn him back over to you smelling like cigarette smoke and bar scrud, knowing he’s gotta get up and sing for a bunch of kids later in the day with a fat lip and an ugly eye. I wouldn’t really say either of us are out of one another’s league but it’s more like we’re playing entirely different sports, here.”

Sylvia finished cutting out her sign and set the scissors down for him to use next, and patted him on the back. “Don’t lose control on my behalf. Look, I know Monday was hectic and weird and we didn’t get to have too good a talk about it, but he honestly had a really great time. Yadda, yadda, you’re sweet as tea, blah blah, you’re half a gentleman,” she said with a smirk.

He looked up at her and squinted. “Always with the short jokes.”

“He gets them, too.”

“I’m also just not sure I’m ready for this sort of stuff again.”

“You’re already doing this sort of stuff again. You’re going to do it again Saturday. It’ll be easier than remembering how to ride a bicycle and before you know it I’ll have to start conducting brake checks.” She took a moment to take off her gloves and pocket them, and then look around for the tape. “Your most serious, free-wheeling down a wet, grassy hill with shitty breaks relationships, go.”

“Grop, Syl.”

“Go, come on.”

There was Jelly, that first summer fling where he honed his skills on the drums and on building rapport with venue management. The rental van and the weird trailer with the space squid painted on the back doors, serving both as the equipment hauler and the merch booth. She was always quick with a joke and a compliment. They were both so crazy, stupidly young and the galaxy was theirs, and they were each others’.

“But eventually the fun boiled right down to a burnt mess of business, and it had to end. It had to end or the band was going to end. Cosmic Destruction seemed perpetually on tour and it’s been too long a while since I’ve seen or heard from her last. She doesn’t keep social media save for promotion, and she’s not the one that runs it.”

He handed Sylvia his sign to hang and she made a gesture to keep going as she stepped over to the display.

He’d met Elly by accident at a cafe and she begged him to come to one of her classes. That wasn’t so much him being on the runaway bike as it was her with him chasing after. She was spectacular fun - a small-studio ambience musician who taught hand-to-hand combat and defense, and dance. She had a gorgeous laugh and a solid, trusting smile, and he loved how she would take him in a tight, full-body hug before either trying to wrestle him down to the floor or lead him into a step segment with some soft humming.

“You danced? Like… professionally or…?”

“No, I mean, she did, but she mostly taught me. I wasn’t good at all. By the time we went our own ways I was much better at a lot of things. Dancing, fighting….” He left that open and made a suggestive expression when Sylvia looked at him, expecting him to finish.

The zbornak laughed quietly. “That’s gross.”

“It’s gross.”

Awesome wasn’t his first foray into same-sex dating, but with him there were still a ton of first forays regardless.

“And seconds and thirds,” Sylvia said, tongue-in-cheek. He had cracked open the lid on his second coffee and popped into the back to microwave it quickly, and came back out to ask her if she wanted him to finish or not. She declined the specifics and stuck her tongue out at him. 

Awesome had actually introduced her to Styx’s management crew towards the end of their relationship (the first time). Styx Asterope, the heart of space itself, herself. The smoothest, easiest gig he’d had before finding and settling in with the Harbingers. She made him feel weightless and yet so grounded. Mysterious but very upfront and bold, and yet eerily graceful, he was enthralled. She saw, like Elly did, his potential, and urged him to set and meet personal goals and learn what he could, and he went from drumming to stage management, to artist management. The two of them were an unstoppable force.

Were.

Nearly everything else was really short-lived, mostly physical. Not many looking for anything long-term and the eventual ones that were didn’t take too well him him being gone on tour or weren’t sold on Hater’s big presence in his life. “Anyways, they all move in circles that are outside of my reach, now,” he said with a small sigh. “Well, except Awesome.”

Sylvia gave him an incredulous look. “A drummer I can believe, I’ve seen that. But first you tell me you dance, then you tell me you’re an illicit drug dealer, now you’re telling me you’re a poet. What next?”

“Oh, no, that’s an old song lyric, actually.” He started trying to sing it from the beginning, hoping to jog her memory if there was a chance she’d recognize it, but she just listened quietly with a bit of a smirk at the corner of her lips as he sat there, snapping his fingers and tapping his foot against one of the stool rungs on the downbeat. It was truthfully a pretty fast, upbeat song for the subject, but he would easily admit if asked that lyrical dissonance was one of his little loves. As he finished the chorus though, he felt like an idiot and stopped. “Ah, forget it, it’s pretty old. I don’t even remember if it charted or not. And illicit, nothing, Asterope had a legitimate prescription for glitterstim. All of that was harassment.”

“Wander likes poetry.”

“I learned that.”

“Peepers, listen. You’re too smart for me to try to put anything by you, most of the time,” she started. He made to interrupt her with a gripe and a half, but she didn’t let him. “So here’s the deal. Wander’s a big boy and he knows how to take ‘no’ and all those sorts of things. I just ask the same thing of you that I’ve asked of him, and what you’re worried about: that if you decide not to go through with this then you don’t drag it out.”

“What do you know about me leads you to believe that I drag out dead and dying relationships?”

“Awesome.”

“Please. That’s just a series of mostly isolated and horribly unfortunate life choices…. In all honesty, though, matchmaker bias aside - do you think it’ll work?”

She reached forward, placing a hand on either side of his head, and shook him gently. Patiently, Peepers allowed this, because he knew what was coming next. Sylvia stopped, and then stared into his eye with such scrutinizing intensity that he almost gave it up and laughed. “Magic 8 Ball says… ‘Ask again later’. Huhm.”

After a moment’s consideration, he asked, “Has it been enough time?”

Sylvia hesitated, the smile on her face dropping a bit at the corners. “That’s up to you, buddy.”

“I don’t remember that being an answer.”

“Fine.” She shook him again. This time he did laugh, and so did she. “‘As I see it, yes’.”

“I said matchmaker bias aside.”

They could hear the door open and the bell ring, so they got back down to work matters quickly, almost in a guilty manner. Peepers was glad to see that it was the guy from the sandwich shop around the corner and a few blocks down from the store - with an application in hand. Well. He didn’t have hands, so it sort of floated in front of him ethereally, glowing a soft green. He made his way to the counter, and both Peepers and Sylvia greeted him with big smiles, reflected in his shiny sides. “Hello,” Sylvia said with a wave. She pointed at the application. “Is that for us? Oh, boy, who tricked you into wanting to work here?” They both looked at Peepers, who gave a small shrug.

The little black Cube carefully let the application come to rest on the desk, and he noticed that there was new stock. He asked about it - a low, pleased and pleasing hum emanating from him. They spent a while discussing that before he sort of meandered about on his own, as usual, picking up and playing with an item here and there.

“Did Jeff mention that we’re getting glass pieces back in the shop soon?”

Sylvia nodded. “He said that you had a vendor coming back.”

“Yeah, it’s Dom.”

“Dom from your Saturday adventure. Magma Carta Dom.”

“Uh-huh. If I have it my way she’ll be doing appearances and signings here for promo. She made some really nice pieces and I want to capitalize on that again.”

His coworker gave him a hard stare down. “You say that like you’re her manager now.” She gasped, loudly.

He only shrugged.

Cube came back up towards the counter and looked between the two of them alternately, producing his cellphone from one of his void surfaces. It glowed faintly as he brought it down to them and fired up a video. They watched, entranced, as a glass-blower built spiraling parts of a chandelier, almost robotically. It was very calming. Sensual, in a way. Much like all of the other videos he would share with them. He hummed.

“Yeah, man,” Peepers told him happily. “She’ll probably do some custom work. I’ll let you know what’s what when we get things ironed out.”

The Cube twisted around a bit and sent out a small pulse.

“I’ll have Jeff call you and leave a message, if you’re okay with that. No need to interrupt your shift today, I know how that goes.” They watched as he spun and emitted a soft chord, and headed out. Sylvia turned to Peepers and asked if he was quitting his day job. “Nah, this is just coverage for tour. Nothing new. But I’d be willing to bet that guy will be happy to quit _his_ day job. I’ll have to ask Jeff if he thinks it’d be a safe bet yet to hire a fifth person.”

“By ask you mean talk him into it.”

“Just weighing the pros against the few cons there are for the argument.”

Close to the end of Peepers’ shift, Jeff arrived, a bag of groceries in hand and when he came up to the counter he looked at the two of them approvingly before heading through the beaded curtain to the back. “Glad to see you picking out something you wanna take home for yourself, Peeps, it’s been a while. I brought some bagels and fruit, if either of you want to help me eat at it.”

Peepers’ phone went off, and he retrieved it from his pants pocket. It was Wander. Sylvia exclaimed, and Jeff came over with the fruit bowl to see what the fuss was.

“‘Good morning, Mr. Peepers! Saturday I’ll be performing at the bookstore and it would be great to have coffee after. Does 11am sound okay?’ Gosh, but that’s a bit late for me,” Peepers read aloud, and then made the quiet comment.

“Wander?” asked Jeff. Sylvia turned to smile at him widely and nod.

“Think I could get a small nap and a shower in before then?” Peepers asked her. She turned back to smile at him even wider and nod more enthusiastically. He then looked at Jeff, who had a bit of a concerned look on his face. “You wound up guessing it. ...What? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” the shop owner said, putting up his hands and wiggling his fingers a bit. “How did that happen?”

Sylvia shrugged in an overly exaggerated manner, still smiling.

Saturday arrived a hell of a lot sooner than he’d thought it would.

In turn he showed up at the bookstore early, having foregone a nap in lieu of a shower and a fresh shirt, and headed for the cafe. The barista greeted him warmly and was happy to see him looking at a copy of the picture book on the counter alongside the register. The author was actually going to be in soon to play a regular set, they explained, so he asked if he might purchase one of the books as well. He was directed to the main registers. Peepers thanked them and asked for a pourover in the largest cup they had and one of the frosted donuts from the baked goods case, and found a quiet seat just out of the line-of-sight of the cafe’s seating area but one that kept it in his. He set his helmet down on the floor under the table, took off his jacket and draped it across the back of his chair and looked at the shelving next to him on one side as he fiddled with his scarf. Business and finance. On the other side of him and slightly behind, it was books on art movements. He popped back up to the counter for a moment to let the barista know where he would be seated, and that he’d be right back a moment, if they didn’t mind watching after his jacket.

He came back to his seat with the receipt from his new purchase tucked just inside the cover, and it was just in time - his coffee was done and it certainly was the largest cup they could fill. 

Some of the store staff came over to help move tables and chairs out of the way in the cafe to lay down some foam mats and set up a microphone and an amp. Slowly but surely the parents and their little ones started arriving, placing orders for coffees and juices, cookies and other treats, and settling in for the show. He watched the kids bounce around on the mats, excited to see each other and excited for the fun to start, and then one of them pointed out the window and called for their mother. She bent in her seat to give the brilliantly-colored child a hug and say, “He’s here! Good eye!”

The sweater caught his attention at first; a hideous black and teal thing that looked like it should have had shoulder pads and a syndicated daytime talk-show of its own. He took a bite of his donut to keep from laughing too loudly, and watched as Wander set down his sticker-covered banjo case and his patched-together backpack, and took a little time to greet the kids before starting.

The nomad giggled a lot, a gaspy, squeaky, joyous sound.

Peepers had the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach that his cool was unraveling itself, and quickly.

In between all of the songs about the senses and being friends and other things one might teach children while they got up and danced to songs about stomping like gragons, was the song in the book, about the auroras. And it was a lot more illustrious than he had imagined it to be. The kids were rapt, and so was he, certain that even though he’d seen some incredible sights, this was one he envied.

Towards the end of the set and a cover of the Beat-Alls’ “Here Come the Suns” that was so innocent and radiant that he figured he could very easily go without hearing the original ever again, Wander finally noticed him. It didn’t seem to faze him at all, and he finished up with a big smile and some hugs from the kids again before everyone emptied out to go home or to do a little shopping. As he started to converse with some of the parents, Peepers got up, placed his empty plate in the bus bin by the trash receptacles, and gathered his belongings and his coffee. He asked at the trade-ins counter if he could keep his helmet and jacket there while he browsed, and they were happy to allow it. “He draws a pretty big crowd every week, doesn’t he?” he asked the employee helping him.

“Oh, yes! He’s really great. I see you picked up his book. Waiting to get it signed?”

“Sort of.”

“The artist isn’t in today, but I can take some contact information from you, if you’d like.” He was very appreciative of the effort and left a phone number, and then moseyed over towards the vinyl shelving. As he approached, something else drew him over a bit. An inconspicuous cabinet along the wall, near the end of the CD shelves.

The little black plaque over its doors had gold lettering. "Pornoire," it read.

He opened the cabinet doors and peered inside to find a few shelves full of old but shrink-wrapped video tapes and DVDs, some books that seemed like they would make wonderful coffee table conversations pieces, a ton of new novelty items like bachelorette pins and fun dice, and amazingly, a trove of ancient issues of magazines that he was sure had been published around the time he was in high school. 

He knew this bookstore was ninety-percent secondhand goods, but this sort of... pre-loved... stuff kind of threw him off. It felt kind of like finding and looking through someone else's stash.

Okay, it felt exactly like that.

He set down his coffee and rifled through the issues of Xenoplay. To his surprise, he found a goodie he remembered from sophomore year of college.

The door of the armoire rattled as Wander made his presence known and Peepers jumped and threw an arm out to steady himself from falling over. The musician laughed. A few people looked over, but then looked away, and Peepers was glad for it. He absolutely knew that he was blushing, and held up the magazine and wiggled it a bit. "This was a good issue," he said quietly. "One of the first things that was destroyed when we first brought Captain Tim home. She loves to hide underneath our beds and in the closets."

Wander nodded, trying not to look at the magazine, but keep smiling at Peepers instead. "So you don’t keep anything of... importance hidden under the bed anymore?"

"She will literally climb anywhere and eat anything. Nothing in the apartment is really safe unless the door is closed. Hater calls her his 'little munchface' and I call her 'the reason we're not getting the security deposit back.'" He put the magazine back and reached for his coffee cup, hesitating and then picking up a boxed set of erotically-shaped shotglasses. "I like that the new items in here are things you would find down at the shop, but it seems a bit more debaucherous picking them up here rather than there."

Wander took one good look at the contents of the armoire, and his focus bounced around lightly enough to avoid feeling uncomfortable, letting it land on an innocuous stack of shrink-wrapped decks of playing cards. He picked one up and read the back of it - the point of the deck was to draw profane and obscene acts and locations for bedroom play. He put it back down carefully. "So, uh, any thoughts?"

"They're not very diverse. And I would wonder if they're actually the right measurements for legit shots but, then again, they _are_ novelty items."

"I meant the show, silly." Wander turned away and started looking at the various instruments hung up along the wall. There was a really pretty lap drum that caught his eye almost instantly.

Peepers shut the doors to the cabinet, having put the shotglasses back, and sipped at his cup, looking at the instruments now as well. "I know. It was cute. I was kind of expecting storytime but I guess you sort of do that with the music? The kids just eat it up. I was pretty entertained, too.”

“You definitely looked it. You had an art book open but I don’t think I saw you look down at it once durin’ the set.”

“Honestly I thought I was hidden pretty well.”

“Honestly your smile was like a beacon.” Wander glanced over at him and then picked up a tambourine off of a shelf, rattling it at him rhythmically and singing a line from one of his songs, about sharing joy. “There’s somethin’ about a smile, how it makes life more worthwhile!”

“How’d you manage last week after... Um. After all of that?” Peepers said, over the tambourine and trying to shrink down into the safety of his scarf, away from the attention of other shoppers. He gestured loosely at his eye, trying to allude to the bruising that Wander had developed.

The tambourine went back on the shelf. “Oh, oh no, it’s fine, it was good. The kids didn’t even notice the black eye.”

“They didn’t?”

“Oh.” Wander took a moment to shrug his backpack off and push his sweater sleeves up a bit. He sort of wished that he’d done the superhero getup two weeks in a row - how neat that would have been to show that one off. Instead, he just reached into his bag and pulled out his mask, and held it up to his face. “Every so often I do a show as ‘The Boy Wander’ and sing fun crime-fightin’ songs and stuff like that. I was supposed to do it today but I bumped up it to last weekend.”

Peepers gave him as surprised a look as he could. “I’m not supposed to know you’re a superhero. Your identity is compromised - I’m a liability now. I can be used against you.”

The songwriter giggled softly, putting the mask away and rubbing at his face gingerly, and taking a big sip of the hot tea he’d ordered. His eye certainly was looking better, but it still felt sore.

It was very obvious that Peepers had something else to say just then but decided against it, so Wander went ahead and filled the silence by clearing his throat and asking how his week had been. They turned back around to look through the bins of sheet music, and as Peepers spoke, Wander found that he had a distinct cadence. Very even, full of curt, sharp tones, and he gestured a lot with his hands in a sturdy rhythm, too. Definitely a percussionist. He started flipping through the vinyl in the next bin over, content with listening to the patterns of Peepers’ voice. It wasn’t until Peepers asked him how his week was that he realized he was only superficially present, and he brought himself back to the conversation.

“Well, it started off to be just a real winner of a week, sarcastically sayin’. Had some trouble Monday, Tuesday was full of paperwork, Wednesday was just downright rough. But then I remembered I had to text you and suddenly things picked up for me. I mean, it was still tough goin’ what with serious work stuff and waitin’ for today to roll around but I really truthfully think it’s all gonna end on a really good note,” he said, and then stopped himself because he noticed he was speeding up a bit, letting his accent bloom a bit, and generally rambling. Peepers looked up from the jazz albums he was sifting through and sort of looked like he was waiting on Wander to say some more.

“You think so? Well, good. I think so, too.” he said, and Wander blessed him under his breath and sipped noisily at his tea. After a little quiet, Peepers asked, “I’ve asked Sylvia this a few times, because she’s from another galaxy over, but she’s always made it sound like you guys are laying low or that you owe someone money. What brought you here to this corner of the star system?”

“Uhm,” Wander started, uneasily. “Well, you know, sometimes you just end up in a spot and have to spend a little time where you are before you can move on.” He frantically tried to keep his voice from slipping down an octave and to keep his enunciation clear. “But I knew Jeff and she knew Ryder, and so here we are. It’s not so bad. It’s been a really nice break from doing what we used to do - travelin’ so much without a real destination can get to be tougher than a pine knot after a while.”

“It can be,” Peepers chuckled quietly. “Listen, Wander, I’m about as nervous as an orange banjo player in a weird sweater that’s giving me flashbacks to my childhood.”

“Well, it was pretty cheap. Thrifted it for a song and you could sing it yourself,” he said, certain that he must sound something ridiculous by now. As gentile as a boiled peanut, Sylvia would say, drawing out “genteeeeel” and “bahwled” the same way he did. He could feel his face heating up quick. “But yeah, I guess I’m not hidin’ it well at all, am I?”

“I was just about to ask if you were feeling alright.”

He shifted the weight of his backpack a little higher up on his shoulder with a shrug. “You say you’re nervous, too. Are _you_ feelin’ alright?” They looked at one another for a moment or so, and then they laughed. “Boy, look at us.”

“When was the last time you’ve been out doing the dating thing? It’s been a while for me so I know that this is probably why I’m feeling the way I am.”

He nodded, unsure of what to say to that. A discussion about feelings should have been an easy-peasy diving board to work with. Why was he high and dry and feeling like his stomach was twisting itself up like a balloon animal? Not now, he told himself, wait till you get home and then pick it all apart. This also should have been a simple answer. Condense it, Wander! he thought. “It’s been a while. Had a small hiccup the last time and it sort of put me off of things since.”

“Oh. I know how that goes.”

Too condensed. Aw, heck. “I wouldn’t have known last weekend, you sure were as cool as a cucumber. Even when I was decked out like a patio.”

“I think I was just too tired to panic, really.” He stopped to pull out an album. 

They drank entirely too much coffee and tea between them and felt sort of bad for commandeering the chairs tucked away in the occult books section, but when Peepers yawned in the middle of answering a question about whether he liked touring as a musician or a manager more, it reminded them both that he was out way past his normal bedtime. But neither of them got up and out of their chairs for a good few minutes. Wander watched him drum his fingers on the side of his cup, and was happy that they’d both been able to calm down and enjoy a quiet conversation that wasn’t interrupted by setlist changes or rounds of shots. Finally, though, Peepers sat up and asked him if he’d like a ride home, unless he had plans to go hang out with Sylvia and get a little more acquainted with the shop than just crashing and bashing the displays just inside the front door.

“That would be nice,” Wander said with a smile.

They made their way back up to the front of the store - as Peepers took Wanders’ cup to go place them in the cafe’s bus bin, Wander asked one of the cashiers to put that drum he had been looking at on hold under his name, and that he’d be back in the following Saturday with enough store credit from his show earnings to pay for it.

Peepers handed Wander his helmet to wear, and they headed outside and around the back end of the building where the parking lot was. “You picked up a copy of my book,” he said as they left, putting on the helmet so he could carry his banjo case easier.

“I did,” Peepers said. “I was really glad I got to hear you sing the song it’s about. I kept trying to figure it out in my head after the first time you showed me the book and now it’s probably going to be stuck in my head for days.” Wander saw that he was blushing a little, and Peepers shrugged when he saw him staring. “It’s really, really good stuff.” They both went quiet as they approached his motorcycle; he put the book in one of his saddle bags and helped Wander get settled in, banjo and all, and they were off.

It was cold and windy out, and he just knew Peepers could feel him shivering as they rode through town, and that he could probably hear it in his voice when Wander leaned forward to give him directions. But when they reached his and Syl’s building, he let it slide so they could share a quick cigarette around the corner out of the wind and make plans for another date.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said, blowing out a thick cloud of smoke.

“It’s no big d--” Peepers got partly through that when Wander leaned forward and gave him a hug.

He could feel his sweater getting stuck on the studs of the jacket, but that was alright. “Thanks for bein’ the bright spot of my long week, Mr. Peepers.” And it took a moment or two, but Peepers did adjust and sort of half-hugged him back. He was more than willing to take that.

“Peepers is good, no need for the title,” he replied quietly. They carefully pulled apart, Peepers woefully aware that his jacket was not the safest around most other fabrics, and finished the cigarette between them.

He watched Peepers ride off down the street and out of view before going inside. It was still early enough for lunch, so he settled down on the couch with a tasty sandwich, and a movie that he wouldn’t have to pay much attention to while he processed his morning.

Sylvia texted him. “:?” was all it said.

Wander debated calling her, but then he just texted back, “:D”

He didn’t want to worry her halfway through her shift with saying they needed to talk when she got home.


End file.
